Pardon me for my imprecision in my usage of language.
The belief that Christ is the center of all spirituality is not a doctrine shared by all christians (with a small C) But the belief that Joshua Ben Joseph was the messiah is part and parcel of Christianity. (big C)
As such, I feel that it qualifies as Christian dogma. Or, to refine further:
“The statement that all roads lead to Christ is dogmatic and characteristic of some sects of Christianity and only the only sects which subscribe to it are part of Christianity”
Some of think Christ will meet you on whatever path you take. But I think the only reason He is there is because you are there. I also made a point in that same thread of offering the basis of my faith in Christ to Czarcasm with a slightly different metaphor than Liberal’s garden, and that was not even noticed.
Pretending that there is no baggage involved in the ongoing pile on of Liberal ignores the entire historic emotional reason he has posted here in the pit so much in the last few months. He is looking for a place where his voice can be heard without endless contention and accusation. I fear it will be hard for him to find, among the current membership. Sad, if you want my opinion.
Tris
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung ~
What reason would that be, and what baggage is there?
I was unaware that any single Doper was able to post here without having some contention and accusation, especially in the Pit. IMHO that wish is a totally unrealistic desire.
Who do you think is to blame for all of this ‘baggage’? There certainly was no great Doper meeting in which we decided that any post by Liberal must be met with contention and accusation. He has brought this upon himself and has to deal with the consequences. Furthermore I have seen no evidence of a change in his posting style which will continue to exacerbate this phenomena.
Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s see how much the following modification looks like the original:
So an expression of a belief in Transubstantiation (a dogma which is unique to certain christians and schools of thought within Christianity) is an effort to box others into a particular world view?
Ho-Ka-a-ay!
Frankly, I suspect that we’re moving into the realm of arguing for its own sake. I agree with you that Liberal has a view regarding “salvation” (for lack of a better word) with which you take issue. I do not beleive that he was addressing that particular point (or was even seriously aware of your objections) in the other thread, where the majority of posters were objecting wrongly to a view that he was trying to “drag” atheists into his “garden.” While I think that the non-believers were mistaken in their claims regarding his intention, I do believe that it was his semantic digression that misled them because his attack on Czarcasm’s statement predisposed them to think that he was challenging Czarcasm’s wish to “opt out” of that belief system.
You are free to dispute Liberal’s views, but it seems pretty much a waste of time to attack him, here, for a discussion in which he did not fully engage, there.
The reason was the emotional content of his posts earned him warnings in other foura, and he felt safe from official sanction posting in the pit. Probably not a good plan, given the average emotion level in the pit, but it did keep him out of official trouble for a while.
And by the way, Finn he doesn’t lie. Your accusations of lying are indifferently supported by your wide-open interpretations of what information he has available, and deliberate misrepresentations of the intent of his language. He is wrong at times. He is willing to express his opinion first, and then marshal his support afterwards. He lacks an understanding of how to address his audience from shared perspectives. But those are honest failures.
He uses metaphoric language without popular culture referents. When you interpret them you decide that’s a lie. It is certainly oblique, perhaps even obtuse, but hardly even dishonest. Then he gets angry, because your accusation, generally shrill, and generally including inaccurate paraphrases are then carried to absurd conclusions. You then regularly attribute your absurd conclusions to him. That is fundamentally dishonest.
If you are not stalking him, you are the most incredibly unlucky person in the cyber world, to share every single philosophical interest with a person you despise. I tend not to believe in coincidence.
Tris
“Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.” ~ Zeuxis ~ (400 BC)
Tom, you can’t just substitute words and then claim that you’re saying the same thing. You’ve changed the entire context by doing that.
If I tell you that my dogma is that the only ultimate truth is that Jesus is Lord, and whoever you worship it’s really Jesus, I’ve boxed you into my dogmatic system. Because no matter who you worship, it’s ‘really’ Jesus.
I fail to see any connection between the semantic value of that statement, and the belief in transubstantiation via the ritual of communion.
Nah, I just think you’re being unfair and/or not seeing where I’m coming from, and I aim to rectify that. I assure you, I don’t argue just to argue. Personally I view that as taking a position I would not support in order to stir things up.
You’ve brought this up before, and I must admit I didn’t answer because I’m a bit confused by it.
I thought that after the initial misreading I made of his quotes on worship, I made myself rather clear. The line where I said “As if a Gnostic, a Pantheist, a Deist, an Atheist, a Nihilist, a Solipsist, etc… arrive at anything like a common ground”, I had thought, was sufficently different from the other posters’ objections as to be self evident without me calling attention to it.
And, to be fair, I don’t think you or I can speak to what Lib was or was not aware of. He’s the only one who was in his head, and I don’t believe he made it clear what exactly he misunderstood, if anything.
[QUOTE=tomndebb
You are free to dispute Liberal’s views, but it seems pretty much a waste of time to attack him, here, for a discussion in which he did not fully engage, there.[/QUOTE]
I wasn’t aware I was attacking him here, at least not after my first few posts in this thread.
And, if it was a discussion in which he did not fully engage, that sounds like a fine reason to Pit someone. After all, it’s goddamn annoying to be debating with someone who’s only half there.
I am not saying this is necessarily the case here but Liberal uses obscure definitions specific to philosophy or whatever without informing other Dopers that he is doing so. That is not a failure in interpetation but rather a failure on his part to communicate his ideas. See MEBuckner’s post in this thread for an example. Liberal does things like this but instead of providing the definition in his post we find out 2 pages latter that he meant something else.
First off, how the fuck am I supposed to misrepresent his intent? All I know is what the text implies, and that’s what I went with. In fact, he was the one who kept trying to play mind reader and tell me why I was posting, I was the one who kept telling him what the logical consequences of his arguments were.
As far as I can tell, the only time I discussed his paradigm directly was when I said “All religions are not equal, even though you’d like to think that your God is so great that everybody else is worshipping it but they just don’t know it.”
Now, you may claim this attempts to define his intent, but I would disagree. The belief that your chosen dogma (eg. that Joshua ben Joseph was Christ and that Christ is the ultimate truth behind all religions), somehow subsumes all other religions, does indeed smack of thinking that your dogma is so wonderful, that it includes all other religions, whether they want to be included, or not.
How would you describe the mindset of someone who told you that their religion had a belief in the nature of God, and it was the most true belief out there. So true in fact, that it was more true than yours, and you were, in fact, worshipping his religion’s God and not your own. What possible paradigm can a statement with this semantic value come from othe than that your God is so special/true/wonderful/what have you that everybody else’s Gods are invalid and really just a shadow of the ultimate reality behind religion, which is your dogmatic coneption of God?
Further, I believe the first time I accused him of lying is when he claimed that I was “not only disingenuous; you’re downright bold about it.” in my paraphase. Yet, my paraphrase expressed exactly what his quote about worship meant, and what it implied. And I challenge you to show otherwise.
Finally, it is a lie to first say that anybody who is religious/spritiual will reach your conception of Christ, and then claim that you’re not saying all religious/spiritual people reach the same point, and that point is Christ. Lib may be many things, but an idiot he is not. I believe he had full knowledge of exactly what he was saying, and instead of admit he had spoken in error, he denied having implied what he’d implied.
Or in Lawyer Cant: Was he lying then, or is he lying now?
Stuff like this is dishonest:
Because, Lib is a smart guy and so I’m sure he knows full well that by saying Christ is the ultimate reality, and you’ll reach him no matter if you’ve cut him off or not, that Christ is greater than any others because no matter what you do, you must reach him. That even if you try to reach another God, your personal God, you’ll end up reaching Christ.
And then there are dishonest failures, like claiming that everybody who is spiritual/religious will reach Jesus in the end, and then claiming that you’ve never said any such thing.
Perhaps I was in error for not explicitly stating ‘the essence of… is one and the same.’ but I did not believe it was necessary, as we were obviously talking about the ultimate metaphysical underpinnings, and thus, essence, of various religions.
So, yes, the ultimate essence of any religion is Christ, this ‘one and the same’ entity that all religions share, according to Lib at least (or maybe the pitee if Lib just went off on a total devil’s adocate jag). And then when I point out, correctly, that this ends up making the essence and ultimate ‘truth’ of all religious belief, ultimately, ‘one and the same’ as his, he denies it.
It is dishonest to claim that as a matter of essence all religions reach ‘one and the same’ point, and point is Christ, and then claim that you’re saying nothing about other religions being, essentialy, ‘one and the same’ as yours.
First, I started out arguing an opposing position, but doing it politely.
Second, put your money where your mouth is. My parahprase was a direct, factual, logical summation of the quote I was paraphrasing. If you disagree, show me where I was wrong.
In addition, show me any one place where the conclusions that his quotes logically lead to were ‘absurd’ and not, in fact, what those statements logically implied.
Again, put your money where your mouth is. Name one conclusion I drew which was absurd and/or not justified by a possible reading of his text.
What the fuck are you talking about? Does this honestly make sense to you?
Why do I have to be stalking him to have similar philosophical interests? Further, cite for where we share “every single philosophical interest.”
(In case you’re wondering, an unsupported and untrure statement like that is, well, a lie.)
I’d wager it’d take me just under ten minutes to find you a hundred threads I participated in that he did not, and a hundred he participated in which I did not.
Finally, you too should get out of the mind reading bussiness. I most certainly do not despise Liberal, I dont’ hate him, I don’t think he’s a bad person. I think he can be legendarily frustrating and fucking annoying at times. I even went out of my way to say just that in this very thread. Remind me again, between you and me, which one of us is dishonest?
Ya know what, I shouldn’t assume that just because Lib is smart he understood what his words were implying. Especially since I just pointed out to Tom that none of us are in Lib’s head.
I admit, it seems very hard for me to believe that he didn’t realize exactly what his words suggested, but I will fight my own ignorance and give him the benefit of the doubt.
So, I probably shouldn’t have responded to his claims that I was lying by saying he was lying. I simply should’ve said he was being fucking annoying and left it at that. Again, I was sloppy and got emotoinally involved, bad mojo.
Consider my claims as to Lib’s understanding or lack thereof spurious and retracted as incorrect.
Well, whether or not I’ve agreed with you in the past, I’ve always found your posts interesting and generally well written.
I don’t know them all that terribly well though, since I tend to avoid the political threads, but from those that I have seen, even when I (and others) think you’re wrong, you at least research and write your posts in an intelligent manner.
I’m glad you noticed that. However, that was exactly what I noticed about your posts which I explicitly quoted.
First you claimed a generalized Christian dogma that does not exist, then you claimed that it was “part” of Christian dogma because some Christians happen to hold it, then you get upset that I point out a different Christian dogma that some Christians happen to hold. I reassert that original claim that Liberal’s view is one of Christian dogma is in error.
As to his later missing your point despite the evidence that you feel separated your claims from that of others, I would still contend that while your point may be different than those of his other opponents, it was couched in language very close to the language they used and that you made no effort to distinguish your posts from their points. If Liberal is explicitly telling non-believers that he is not compelling them to his vision and they are saying “Yes you are” and you chime in with “Yes you are” without explicitly distinguishing your claim from theirs, then I suspect that he is going to lump you with them. Where, for example, is your post to Czarcasm noting that Liberal had, indeed, excluded those who did not believe, even while insisting that Liberal had no right to lump in other believers? Note that standing on the sidelines, I could see both the confusion Liberal created and the way in which it shaped Czarcasm’s arguments, but even with no dog in the fight, I could not immediately discern that your position was different than Czarcasm’s…
In fact, you explicitly started off with the claim
A point you can only reach by misreading his statements to that point in the thread.
Again, I can see where his extraneous attack on the use of the word “worship” could lead to that misunderstanding, but at the point you entered, he had made no claim that atheists believed anything. In fact, in the very quote you used to prompt your statement, he explicitly said
Bolding is mine because you chose to highlight different phrases and ignore his explicit reference to religion.
Now, it is fine to object to him lumping all religious thought together. However, to do that by deliberately accusing him of addreessing atheistic thought is hardly the way to get him to acknowledge a problem with his views on religious thought.
I’ll throw in my two cents, since I’m mentioned specifically in the OP.
Lib, I’m glad you’re taking a break from the Pit; that, and your behavior in a recent thread we were both in, gives me a little bit of hope.
But, and I’m going to be honest here, it’s only a little bit of hope. Because I’m feeling like we’ve been through this before, and I’m not sure what’s going to make this time different. I hope it is, but don’t have much to base that hope on.
I kinda feel like you’re someone at a party with interests similar to mine, and so we end up in the same little groups talking about the same things. And some of the time you’ve got fascinating points and it’s wonderful to discuss them with you; some of the time you start arguing points all over the place in a fashion I find very disingenuous; and sometimes you get overexcited and punch me in the gut, totally out of the blue.
It’s this last one that is so shocking to me. My friends don’t gutpunch me. It’s just not done in my social circles.
If it’d just happened once, well, I might be much more forgiving. But you’ve done it multiple times. And it makes me very, very wary.
I’ll lay down my sword gladly; I really hate fighting. But it’s going to be a long time before I drop my shield.
Wow. I claimed it was Christian dogma, and I went to great lenghts in refining that to show that what I was saying was that it was a dogma unique to Christianity, and thus, Christian dogma, a christian dogma, not the christian dogma…
And it is.
And, no, I did not. I never said it was a generalized christian dogma. Simply that such a belief was Christian dogma. There is a difference.
Is the practice of communion and it’s associated metaphysics Christian dogma? Yes. Do all christians follow it? No. Is it dogma, that is christian, and thus christian dogma? Yep.
I don’t know how I possibly could have been any clearer, and now you’re claiming I have said things which I have not. Very frustrating since i went to great lenghts to refine the sentence and show you exactly what I meant.
It is a ‘dogma that is uniquely christian.’ and thus, a christian dogma. Again, are you going to claim it’s a Jewish dogma? Muslim? Hindu? Secular? If not, then you must accept that it is a christian dogma. Please note this, as it is my point, from the beginning! It is dogma, is it dogma that only christians have, thus, it is a christian dogma. Unless you can honestly argue that it’s some other form of dogma, I would suggest that you stop this line of debate.
Hell, I went to great lengths to refine what I was originally saying to make it clearer to you, and now you’re accusing me of changing my tune. You can understand, perhaps, why you interpreting my attempts at clarification as obfuscatory is quite annoying?
Um, no.
I got “upset” (which is an odd word for ‘politely disagreed’) because you are, at best, mixing issues which are seperate. The issue is not whether both statements are dogmatic and from a uniquely Christian perspective/belief, but whether or not both end up boxing other people in.
From my very first post: “(As if a Gnostic, a Pantheist, a Deist, an Atheist, a Nihilist, a Solipsist, etc… arrive at anything like a common ground…)”
If this does not make clear that I’m talking about religions, I fear that anything I might say would be innefective.
First, from Lib’s words I initially gathered that he was talking about non-believers, after that was (sorta) cleared up, I resumed one of my initial lines of debate, and was talking about the faithful. I felt no need to address Czarcasm because by that time my debate with Lib had moved beyond the scope of his, and he’d left the thread to boot!
I really don’t understand that, not that I’m calling you a liar at all, I just don’t get it. In my very first post I discussed both the problem with lumping non-believers in, and the problem with lumping believers in. Maybe I could’ve been ever more explicit, but I figured I could have two lines of thought inherent in a post. Maybe I was somehow unclear…
This is simply untrue Tom.
By saying that all religions point to a truth, and that that truth can be considered to be Universe, thus, anybody who believes in universe believes in a religious truth. This is strict logic, and based on what he said.
No Tom, I did not. Indeed, that factored into how I interpreted the post.
If you claim that all religions lead to one truth, and that truth may be called Allah, or Vishnu, or Universe, then anybody who believes in Universe believes, via syllogism, in God. This was the implications I was discussing.
All religion leads to one Truth, this truth may be called Universe.
What are you saying here, anyway? That people’s behavior doesn’t matter if it’s in the electronic realm? Or is this just another shrill member of the Liberal Excuse Squad, popping up to say that it’s not Liberal’s fault he acts the way he does?
